What liquid vitamin suppliment do you feed your fish?
I use Boyd Enterprises’s Vita-chem and Seachem’s Nourish!
The Vita-chem goes directly into the tank water once per week, as well as into the bettas’ gel food when I make a batch. It’s also used when I have to soak foods that take longer to soften in tank water, such as dried earthworms or silk worm pupae.
The Nourish is used most days to soak one of the bettas’ meals, usually the non-pellet/gel food meal, which will typically be some sort of frozen/freeze dried/canned invertebrate or occasionally a small piece of seaweed. I’ll soak the food in just the Nourish, no tank water added.
I hope that helps some! Feel free to ask if you have any further questions! :)
I didnt even know things like this existed! Is Nourish something you can put in the tank water? Would the fish still get vitamins and stuff from it?
I wasn’t aware until a couple of years after I first started fish keeping that multivitamins for aquatic animals existed, but I was thrilled upon finding this out! I started dosing multivitamins on a regular basis a few years ago and I believe it has made a big difference in my bettas’, and even my snails’, health and longevity.
Unlike Vita-chem, the Nourish bottle does not include direct addition to tank water in the instructions, so I have never attempted to add it to mine. I wouldn’t imagine it would hurt the animals in small amounts (and minute amounts always get into the water when I am feeding, anyways), but I wouldn’t attempt to dose the tank with it, particularly when no dosing amounts are given.
Vita-chem’s instructions, however, specifically mention dosing the tank water directly, and give precise directions on how to do so, including how much to add and how often. I do this once weekly, after the bettas’ larger weekly water change, and add one drop per gallon, as per the bottle’s instructions.
I think in looking at this it would also be important to look at the ingredients of the individual supplements/what they provide to the animals, and see which ones are more likely to be uptaken by fishes through the aquarium water. I could be wrong, but looking at the two together, Nourish seems to be designed more for being directly ingested (spirulina and chlorella are two major ingredients), while Vita-chem is a blend of vitamins designed to perform both functions. Vita-chem is also more concentrated, and I imagine you would be dosing a lot more Nourish into the water than you would Vita-chem to achieve the same results.
And yes, they can! That’s actually a super cool thing about being a fish- they are able to absorb minerals and vitamins directly from the water around them. This happens primarily through the skin and gills, through which fishes can absorb and pass vitamins, minerals, and toxins. This is commonly recognized as being an important part of osmoregulation but there are certainly other functions, including some related to nutrition, that take place here as well.
There’s going to be some difference from when they’re directly eating it, of course (just the same as when you dose medications into the aquarium vs. feeding medicated foods), but I believe both are beneficial, and at the very least, it doesn't hurt anything to do both!
